[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I agree about views. It makes no sense not to have Print Preview on the View
tab.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Terry Farrell" wrote in message
...
Martin

Two things to help your neighbour...

There is the Quick Access Toolbar (the QAT). This lets you add tools that
are displayed on the Ribbons. The Print Preview button is one of those
that is a must to add.

This brings up the second point. That Pizza button in the top left corner
of the Word screen is actually the Office button and performs many of the
functions of the old File menu and opens using Alt+F. Quite a few
upgraders take a while to realise that it isn't just a decoration
(embarrassingly, that included me). Clicking on the Print button in the
Office menu reveals the Print Preview command.

But this brings us back to what is intuitive about Word 2007's ribbons? In
my opinion, not much. Intuitive would suggest that the Print Preview
command should be part of the Document Views group on the View ribbon -
equally if not more logically that under the Office button, Print command.

My QAT is quite large which suggest to me that the intuitive part of the
ribbons is missing.

Terry Farrell

"Martin C" wrote in message
...
Being a relative power user of Word myself, I am like a lot of others
that find 2007 quite difficult to use as I have trouble finding anything
in it. Only last night, I was asked by a neighbour to help her out with
some issues she was having doing relatively simple things with Word 2007.
Although I managed to help her out, it was a struggle.

Admittedly, I have hardly used 2007 at all, so this could be why I had
trouble finding things. The point here is that my neighbour has not
really used any of the other versions of Word much and found 2007 very
difficult to use. To call it intuitive is therefore wrong.

Although by the end of the session, I was starting to get to grips with
it a bit better, I was not impressed at all. I shall be sticking with
2003 for as long as possible.

For instance, to spend such a long time to find the print preview and
giving up is not a good sign.

Martin


"Bob Buckland ?:-)" 75214.226(At Beautiful Downtown)compuserve.com
wrote in message ...
Hi Terry,

To an extent I agree, for support folks and corporate types who locked
down everything anyway, for many users the Ribbon is 'more
predictable' and they probably don't see that anything has been lost.
In too many companies the 'show menus after a short delay')
is what folks live with after each log in when they're in prior
versions. That was pretty much taken away.

As to customizing the ribbon, it's true that there there isn't the drag
and drop UI built in, but customizing the ribbon via the
RibbonX tools and 'language' to rearrange everything is probably not any
higher degree of difficulty than it would be to write a
macro in VBA (in fact it's easier for me to follow the outline structure
of the RibbonX g), but surprisingly very few folks seem
to have jumped into that. There is even at least one MS tool, although
it's not a WYSIWYG one

What is 'fun' is to start Word in Safe Mode (hold ctrl key when starting
for those reading who may not be familiar with it) and
seeing the 'regular' ribbon if you have customized positions g. Then
you can really get confused.

Over time, I've noted that there is a definite pause now when I start a
prior version and go looking for things as the 'muscle
memory' now 'fights' to want to go to the Word 2007 places as first
choice when using the mouse g.

============
"Terry Farrell" wrote in message
...
I don't think anyone will argue that the transition is far more
difficult
than previous versions. It does get better the more familiar you become
but
I am convinced that it is NOT easier or more intuitive to use than
previous
versions. However, this may be because I have been a Word user since
Word 2
which is making me prejudiced against this major interface change.

The way I see this is that the old interface was like the steering wheel
of
a car: it is intuitive and works well for everyone whether you are an
old
granny out shopping or an F1 ace winning the Monaco Grand Prix. A joy
stick
or a drive-by-wire touch pad would be a disaster for the majority of
normal
drivers. I think of the ribbon as the latter.

Given a 'once and for all' choice between Office 2003 and Office 2007, I
have no doubts that I would choose the former because I am concerned
that
the developers will not resolve the gaping holes they have made of the
latter's interface implementation.

Yes, I like the look and idea of the Ribbon, but I don't like the choice
of
tools that have been added in each group. As far as I am concerned,
until a
user is able to change the layout and tools on the ribbons and create a
custom ribbon straight out of the box without need for third party
tools, it
is a failure. To me the QAT is just a last minute panic measure to
overcome
the inflexibilities of the Ribbons.
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*